There's a saying in the USA:
“If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck...it must be a duck”
and the University of Oregon is creatively using ducks and social media to recruit students -- including international students.
A University of Oregon student music group, On the Rocks, has become known to millions of YouTube users and to USA television viewers through a popular NBC reality series called "The Sing-Off". The group was selected to compete on the second season of the show and competed agains nine other a cappella groups for a $100,000 prize and a Sony Music recording contract.
The 15 members of On the Rocks auditioned for the program in Los Angeles last June, learned they had been selected in July, and went back to LA in August to tape the episodes. The group was picked to appear on the show for its musical talent and, in part, because of the popularity of their videos, most notably a performance of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” that has been viewed nearly 7 million times on YouTube since last spring. The video exploded in popularity after actor Ashton Kutcher recommended the video to his 6 million followers on Twitter, and then again when pop idol Joe Jonas retweeted Kutcher, group member Alex Horwith reported. “It was a very inspiring experience,” he said.
The video’s popularity has boosted sales of the group’s fifth CD, called “A Fifth,” available on iTunes. The single "Call Me a Duck" (featured above) is the first track On the Rocks has recorded exclusively for the University of Oregon.You can download "Call Me a Duck" by On the Rocks, free of charge, on the University of Oregon admissions website.
I'm a big fan of a cappella music and saw On the Rocks perform on television. They totally rocked!
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